Air Kissing on Mars

Kim Dower

Publication Year: 2010

Kim Dower’s poems are sensual and rhapsodic journeys through emotional landscapes sweeping everyday life. Playful, intelligent, funny, edgy, engaging—sometimes biting, ironic and dark, sometimes dreamy and surreal, full of poignancy and arresting metaphors, the daily, simple occurrences in Air Kissing On Mars startle and provoke, while stirring up the fairy dust and turbulent weight of memory; evoking the possibilities and gorgeous chaos of life. Open and inviting, these poems draw the reader into a world seen upside down, inside out, a sideways bird reporting on a universe filled with mystery and passion. Joan Didion meets Tinkerbell, Kim Dower’s poems are as whimsical and light as they are rich and intense. Simultaneously humorous and profound these passionate and personal poems, relatable to all, are drenched with vivid imagery, and sparkle with surprise. Lost languages, disappearing mailboxes, locomotives pummeling through dreams, taxi drivers thrown by the earth’s rotation, shadows in closets, vanishing carrots, men who exfoliate—all manner of haunting evocations come together in this opus of shining and startling wisdom.

Published by: Red Hen Press

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Book Details

Kim (Freilich) Dower grew up in New York on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston. ...

E-ISBN-13: 9781597091817
E-ISBN-10: 1597091812
Print-ISBN-13: 9781597091664
Print-ISBN-10: 1597091669

Page Count: 136
Publication Year: 2010

Edition: First

Air Kissing on Mars

Title Page, Copyright, Acknowledgments

Contents

Dedication

Section 1. True Stories

They took the mail box away

She Is Awakened by a Hair

Dying Languages

I Love a Man Who Exfoliates

At a Poetry Reading Late Saturday Afternoon

Even in a Dream

Birth

Geography Matters

Visiting Janice

Dressing Room

If My Father Were Alive

The Couple Next Door

The Ant in the Window

“They discontinued carrots,”

My Dogs

Different Mothers

Room Service English Muffins

She no longer fears bugs

The Gene

Women’s Competition

Testing for Acid Reflux

The Mole They Cut Out of Your Chest

First E-Mail of the Day

Palm Beach Poetry Festival: First Night

Huge Rat in Laundry Room

Lucy

Alt. Flute 101

Next Time No Potatoes

Old Man at Trader Joe’s

Killing the Fly

Section 2. People Give Me Titles

The Nudists Are Getting Ready to Pack

Nightingale Fever

Bent Daisies

Lean into your feelings,

His Flavors Are Tender

The Teeth Beyond My Window

He Has Nothing Left to Say

The things I do in my car

The Woman Who Mistook a Bug for a Nut

Print Wendy’s Notes

drops on the mirror

The Runaway Poem

The Door (1)

The Door (2)

The Door (3)

When Gifts Go Wrong

“She Showed Me Pictures of Injuries”

The Coffin Bone

Section 3. Cranky in Paradise

Green Is the New Pink

She can’t work

Cranky in Paradise

Full Moon

The Things You Hate

it is what it is

Turbulence

Some Things Don’t Change

She Knows Where the Milk Is

He Doesn’t, She Does

She blew her nose

Cloud Coverage on Easter

Waiting for You in the Bar

I Am Returning

The Necessary Orange

3 am

Section 4. How To

How to Relax

How to Talk to Water

How to Eat Turkey if You Don’t Like Turkey

How to Look at Clouds

How to Celebrate Your Birthday

How to Have a Nice Day

Air Kissing on Mars

About the Author